In a conventional system that downloads resources such as font data and the like to an output device, such downloading is to be managed by a system administrator. The downloading method includes a first method in which connections to the output device to which resources are to be downloaded other than that from the administrator are physically shut off, and the administrator downloads the resources while occupying the output device, and a second method in which the administrator downloads resources, while print data from other users are accepted, so as to parallelly execute the output and download processes.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-25860 has proposed a third method. In this method, upon downloading resources to be used by print data, the print process of which is underway by a given output device, in a multi-channel environment in which the output device can be simultaneously connected to a plurality of information processing apparatuses, the print process of that output device is temporarily paused to preferentially download resources, and restarts upon completion of downloading.
However, it is impossible to practically implement the first method in which the administrator physically occupies the output device in a large-scale network environment connected to a LAN or the Internet.
In the second method in which the print and download processes are parallelly executed, since the resources used to generate a print image are changed simultaneously with generation of the print image, an unexpected output such as garbled characters or the like is formed, and it becomes impossible to recover the output device due to destruction of data.
In the third method that preferentially executes downloading, upon outputting a given output job, the resources of the output device and only that output job are accommodated. For this reason, in an environment in which the resource download process and the output process are not synchronously done, the resource download process may unexpectedly influence other output jobs which do not use those resources. For example, in an environment in which a printer is connected to a network, many uses use it as an output device, and the administrator downloads the resources, the output results of many users are unexpectedly influenced by the download process of the resources, which are used by a specific print job.
As described above, in any of the conventional methods, it is difficult to implement downloading of resources to an output device, which is connected to a network and is shared by apparatuses on the network, and use of the output apparatus without causing any unexpected results.